The American Journal of Medicine reports in its findings by Dr. William Southern’s study that patients treated by doctors who practiced more than 20 years, were more apt to die compared to physicians who trained within the last 5 years.
The results highlight “issues that we have as a medical profession in keeping up to date” with the latest medical knowledge, said Dr. Niteesh Choudhry of Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the new study. It is “a quality of care problem that has been recognized for five to 10 years,” he told Reuters Health.
Dr. Southern reviewed more than 6500 patient records for those hospitalized between 2002 and 2004 at Montefiore ventolin vs generic salbutamol Hospital ( a teaching hospital) Researchers found that those under the most experienced doctors had a higher death rate in the hospital.
“It’s not quite as simple to say that as you get further away from training, your quality gets worse,” cautioned Choudhry.
The problem, he said, is not with the capability of the more experienced doctors, but rather, their familiarity with more current guidelines and practices. The results suggest the need to rethink the way doctors are continually educated in the years after completing their certification, he added.
Now would be a good time to brush off the dust on those journals coming in and actually read them!
